Online dating and social networking continue to grow in popularity with more and more websites and mobile device applications popping up in the market. Online dating allows people to meet and get acquainted online. In today's busy society, the ability to pre-screen candidates is very desirable, especially when the dating service pairs individuals who have already expressed a mutual interest in each other. Additionally, with society becoming more and more involved with online social networking, the amount of in-person communication is dwindling.
Current approaches typically require users to divulge personal information in order to propose matches among users. Or in other instances, all user profiles are publically available. Some systems have attempted to solve this problem by requiring a mutual confirmation before communication is allowed.
In prior systems, users who have pre-selected each other as persons-of-interest, are notified when they are in close proximity to one another. These systems fall short in the privacy and safety department because they reveal the respective users' profile identity as soon as they come within a certain radius of each other. This causes problems because if first user does not want to communicate with the second user at that time, second user has already learned of first user's identity and general location.
Other systems have attempted to solve this problem by allowing users to turn the tracking system on or off as desired. While first user could have easily avoided having her profile and location disclosed by turning off the tracking system, this is not an efficient manner of maintaining privacy while facilitating in-person encounters. By requiring users to turn on or off their system, it runs the risk of users forgetting to switch the system to the desired level. This results in missed opportunities because they forget to turn it on, or results in breaches of privacy when their profile and location are disclosed because they forget to turn the system off.
Furthermore, prior systems that keep user profiles anonymous until both users show a mutual interest in communication, require the user to open the application at their current location.
Other prior systems can generally overwhelm a user as well. Some of these systems require a lot of user inputs leading up to finding a match. Often times, multiple users will be in the same location. Just as first user is about make an in-person encounter with second user, a third user begins the meeting process with first user via the system. When this occurs, first user now has a dilemma on his hands: continue with the second user, and risk upsetting the third user; ditch the second user, obviously upsetting her, and move on with the third user; or potentially upset both users because of the competition.
Although various systems for matching people are known to the art, all, or almost all of them suffer from one or more than one disadvantage. Therefore, there is a need to provide improved systems and methods for facilitation of in-person encounters between people having interest in one another.